DEPARTMENT
OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
HHS faces
a major management challenge in creating “One HHS” from
a highly decentralized structure. Progress on government-wide initiatives
has been uneven, but HHS has established internal accountability standards
that strengthen reform efforts.
| Initiative |
Status |
Progress |
| Human
Capital — Ambitious programs to address recruitment
and succession challenges are in place, and HHS is expanding its
use of performance-based employment contracts. HHS has completed
difficult personnel office consolidations at NIH and FDA, and
is de-layering from as many as seven management levels in some
agencies to no more than four Department-wide. |
•
|
• |
| Competitive
Sourcing — HHS has competitively sourced more than 700
commercial positions in areas such as cleaning services, IT development
and support, building maintenance, and clerical support. |
•
|
• |
| Financial
Performance — HHS has implemented a corrective action
plan to resolve internal control weaknesses and identified common
accounting functions for the Unified Financial Management System.
HHS is also implementing Medicaid error rate pilots in 12 states. |
•
|
• |
| Enhancing
E-Government —
HHS has developed a standard federal electronic grant application
to be linked to a single identifying grant number. |
•
|
• |
| Budget/Performance
Integration — Budget and performance staff has been
integrated within the Office of the Secretary, and HHS has developed
for the first time a draft “One-HHS” action plan that
identifies key performance goals for 2004 program activities.
This plan has been streamlined from reporting 800 performance
measures in 15 volumes to about 40 performance measures in one
report. |
•
|
• |
| Broadening
Health Insurance Coverage Through State Initiatives —
Since the beginning of the initiative, HHS has approved seven HIFA
demonstrations and five Pharmacy Plus demonstrations. Of the approved
HIFA demonstrations, four support enrollment in employer-sponsored
health insurance. HHS is working with an independent evaluator to
determine whether or not implemented demonstrations are decreasing
the number of uninsured. |
• |
• |
| Faith-based
and Community Initiative —
HHS progress is strong in encouraging the full participation of
faith-based and community organizations (FBCBOs) in service delivery.
Efforts are focused on providing FBCBOs with the tools to compete
for federal grants. Additional work is needed to ensure that FBCBOs
can compete for federal programs administered by States. |
• |
• |
|
|
arrows
indicate change in status since baseline evaluation on September 30,
2001. |
Program
Assessments
HHS undertook
an ambigious agenda to evaluate, with OMB, 31 programs, one of the highest
numbers of programs evaluated for any department government-wide. In general,
HHS programs rated slightly above the overall government-wide average.
Twenty-two of the 31 programs evaluated developed new performance measures,
including 14 new long-term performance measures. The PART highlighted
general weaknesses across HHS programs in the financial management area
and in the budget and performance integration. HHS's development of a
Unified Financial Management System should help address these deficiences.
|